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After the shot3 min read

LESSON 69

Culling

Choosing the few from the many.

IN THIS LESSON

  1. Why culling matters
  2. In practice: passes, not decisions
  3. In practice: what to look for
  4. In practice: sequence and rest

Why culling matters

Culling means sorting a shoot and keeping only the pictures worth showing. A digital camera makes it easy to take hundreds of frames, and the edit is where a photographer's judgement shows most clearly. Film photographers did the same with contact sheets. A contact print is made by laying negatives directly on photographic paper and exposing it, so the print is the same size as the negatives. Printing a whole roll of 35 mm or 120 film this way gave a proof sheet, used to choose which frames to enlarge and to catalogue the roll. Your editing software's grid view is the direct heir of that sheet.

In practice: passes, not decisions

From here this lesson is working practice. Do not try to decide on each picture once and forever. Make several fast passes. In the first, reject only the clear failures: missed focus, closed eyes, blur you did not want, exposures beyond repair. In the second, flag the possible keepers. In the third, compare similar frames side by side and keep the best one of each moment. Use the software's star or flag system and stick to one meaning for each mark, so you can find things later.

In practice: what to look for

Also practice. Look first at the whole picture, small, as a viewer will meet it: does it read at a glance? Then check it large: is the important part sharp, is the expression right, does anything cut through a head or poke in from an edge? Gesture and timing usually matter more than technical perfection. A slightly soft frame with the right moment often beats a sharp one with nothing happening. Be suspicious of pictures you like because they were hard to take. The viewer does not know how cold you were.

In practice: sequence and rest

Also practice. After selecting, put the keepers in order. Two strong pictures that say the same thing weaken each other, so keep the better one. A set needs variety: wide and close, quiet and busy, people and details. If you can, leave the final choice for a day; first impressions are coloured by the memory of the shoot. Ask someone who was not there to pick their favourites, and listen when they skip one of yours. Keep the rejects for a while before you delete them, in case a client or a later you sees something in them.

Try it today

  1. 01Import your last shoot and set a timer for fifteen minutes.
  2. 02In the first pass, reject only clear technical failures.
  3. 03In the second pass, flag possible keepers; in the third, keep one frame per moment.
  4. 04Put the final picks in order and remove any two that say the same thing.
  5. 05Leave it for a day, then cut the set by another third.